I think I understood something while reading this.

We really do live inside a collectively imagined world almost as if we’re all dreaming the same dream, and that shared dream makes reality feel solid and obvious.

Your post reminded me of an old behavioral experiment with monkeys in a cage.

There was an electric device that delivered a shock when touched.

After a few painful attempts, the original monkeys learned to avoid it completely.

Then new monkeys were introduced, and the old ones stopped them aggressively, even though the newcomers had never been shocked.

Eventually all the original monkeys were replaced,

but the behavior remained:

a group that feared a danger none of them had actually experienced.

A fiction became a rule.

A rule became a reality.

And the reality continued long after its cause disappeared.

Your analysis feels very similar:

our concepts, hierarchies, and “essential truths” often survive only because we keep behaving

as if they were real.